The Phantom Chronicles BoxSet Read online

  The Phantom Chronicles, Books 1-4

  The Last Phantom, Phantom Hunter, Phantom Legacy, Phantom Unleashed

  T. C. Edge

  This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, events, and incidents that occur are entirely a result of the author's imagination and any resemblance to real people, events, and places is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2019 T. C. Edge

  All right reserved.

  First edition: February 2019

  Cover Design by Laercio Messias

  No part of this book may be scanned, reproduced, or distributed in any printed or electronic form.

  BY THE AUTHOR:

  THE ENHANCED SERIES (MAIN SERIES):

  The Enhanced (Book One)

  Hybrid (Book Two)

  Nameless (Book Three)

  Assassin (Book Four)

  Captive (Book Five)

  Renegade (Book Six)

  Invader (Book Seven)

  Avenger (Book Eight)

  Defender (Book Nine)

  Nemesis (Book Ten)

  Box Sets:

  Book 1-4

  Book 5-7

  Books 8-10

  Sequel (to main Enhanced series, and Warrior Race series):

  The Enhanced: Awakening

  The Enhanced: Conquest

  THE WARRIOR RACE SERIES (ENHANCED UNIVERSE):

  The Warrior Race (Book One)

  The Red Warrior (Book Two)

  Angel of War (Book Three)

  CHILDREN OF THE PRIME:

  The Chosen (Book One)

  Trial of the Chosen (Book 2)

  Blood of the Chosen (Book 3)

  March of the Chosen (Book 4)

  War of the Chosen (Book 5)

  OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR:

  THE WATCHERS SERIES:

  The Watchers Trilogy:

  The Watchers of Eden (Book One)

  City of Stone (Book Two)

  War at the Wall (Book Three)

  The Watchers Trilogy Box Set

  The Seekers Trilogy

  The Watcher Wars (Book One)

  The Seekers of Knight (Book Two)

  The Endless Knight

  The Seekers Trilogy Box Set

  THE PHANTOM CHRONICLES:

  The Last Phantom (Book 1)

  Phantom Hunter (Book 2)

  Phantom Legacy (Book 3)

  Phantom Unleashed (Book 4)

  Contents

  BOOK ONE - THE LAST PHANTOM

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  BOOK TWO - PHANTOM HUNTER

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  BOOK THREE - PHANTOM LEGACY

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  BOOK FOUR - PHANTOM UNLEASHED

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  What’s Next?

  Also by T. C. Edge

  BOOK ONE - THE LAST PHANTOM

  1

  The sight of a dead body wasn't an unusual one for a girl like Chloe Phantom.

  She'd seen them before, in varying states of decay and dismemberment, young and old alike. Frankly, it had been hard to avoid them these last few years.

  She'd even been the creator of a fair few herself.

  Here in 'the pit', the unofficial name for Sub-Tower 12, one of the deepest earthscrapers in the industrial outskirts of LA, however, seeing a fresh cadaver wasn't quite as common as it had been over the preceding years. Those years had been spent running through a variety of war-torn landscapes and battered cities, making the sight of the dead a rather-too-common one for her eyes.

  Now, though, Chloe had gone several months ‘clean’, like an alcoholic clinging to the wagon. She’d neither seen nor smelled a rotting body. Until today.

  The sight of this particular corpse, clogging up the corridor, had seen her fall right off that wagon and go tumbling to the dirt. All with a host of horrible memories for company from the preceding few years.

  By what she could see through the little, murmuring crowd, all ruggedly dressed in their working gear and gathering together down the stifling, steamy corridor on sub-level 75, it was an elderly woman who'd bitten the dust.

  Her body was loosely wrapped into a bundle of filthy rags, surrounded by a collection of odd metal trinkets and cups and other bits of junk. Chloe recognised the woman immediately. She was the resident crackpot, or one of them at least, her insanity well known around these parts, mostly for her tendency to converse with herself, the corrugated iron walls, the pipes that lined the ceiling, and even the many little trinkets she seemed to hold so dear.

  Come to think of it, the only people she didn’t speak with were, in fact, people. Chloe had seen he
r on many occasions, wandering these claustrophobic sub-levels, and hadn’t once known her to speak with anyone. Clearly her collection of junk was company enough.

  Poor old girl must have had a hard life.

  She lived here in the pit, thought Chloe sarcastically. Of course she damn well did…

  Chloe inched forwards, peeking through the gathering of bodies. A man was kneeling down by the old woman’s side, seemingly confirming her departure. He felt her neck for a pulse, began nodding in a perfunctory, ‘ah well’ sort of manner, and all the while kept his eyes on the old woman’s collection of rubbish to see if there was anything of value.

  That was probably the idea all along. The checking of a pulse hardly seemed necessary, after all. The half-open, empty eyes, and the tip of a tongue, dangling from her lips, was a dead giveaway.

  Or maybe that’s just me…

  Still, Chloe’s curiosity had her asking what had happened. That was rare for her. Speaking, that is. She’d been little more than a mute since she arrived in LA several months ago, and found refuge down here in this hellhole that was, conversely, a sanctuary for her. Speaking was only performed via necessity. Chloe’s natural inclination to ‘trust no-one’, as her father once warned her so vehemently, was a habit that had stuck fast like a limpet, refusing to let go.

  Her dad had died the following week. That was probably why…

  Still, she’d been here long enough now to get comfortable. Or, at least, her version of it.

  “So, what happened?" she asked, spying the body and posing the question to the grouping of people ahead. “How did she kick it?”

  She directed the query at no one in particular, her tone of delivery hardly respectful. It was a clear sign that she’d become far too used to witnessing the dead.

  Several of the dreary, smoky-faced workers around her looked to her and shrugged half-heartedly, none seeming to care any more than she did.

  Only one, a man of advanced years with a mouth almost empty of teeth, deigned to answer, doing so with a whistle through the two that remained.

  "Fumes got her," he chimed, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “Old Harriet was on the wane these last months. Bound to happen sooner or later.”

  He started coughing just as he completed the explanation, suggesting he was close to following suit. Which, unfortunately, he might well be. The old were particularly under threat from the nasty industrial smog that filled the lower levels, pumped from the subterranean factories and plants that littered the deep. Mostly, this colossal earthscraper was designed for industry, not for residency, though tended to be both for those who worked here.

  And Chloe was one of them.

  “Harriet,” repeated Chloe sombrely, looking back at the sad old figure on the ground with a pinch of pity. She hadn’t heard the name before. It made her less a bundle of flesh and rags, and more a person. “You knew her?”

  The old man took Harriet in for a brief moment with a mournful gaze.

  “Used to, before she lost it up there,” he said, tapping his forehead. “These walls will do that to a person. It’s the lack of natural light. People weren’t designed to live like rats in a sewer.”

  His eyes turned quizzical as he worked them back to Chloe, inspecting the pale, youthful complexion hidden beneath the soot and grime, and the keen, bright azure eyes that truly didn’t belong down here

  “You’re new here,” he said, coughing again as he covered his mouth with a filthy sleeve. It wasn’t a question, but a statement. As if he knew everyone here.

  “Newish,” murmured Chloe, realising she’d crossed a line and preparing to move off. She didn’t enjoy being inspected too closely. Her natural defensive reaction was kicking in.

  She began pushing through the collection of bodies, keen to escape the man’s gaze.

  As she went, however, his whistling old voice came once more, just as she was extricating herself from the throng.

  “You should seek work up top,” he called out, lifting his eyes to the low, pipe-lined ceiling. “You’re much too young to be down here, girl. This ain’t no place for a thing like you.”

  Chloe didn’t answer. The man had no idea just who she was.

  And what she was capable of.

  She hurried straight down the clanking corridor, feet banging away on the treaded metal floor. Around the body, the crowd were already losing interest, snatching up the old woman’s trinkets for their own and slinking off into the fog.

  Chloe’s mind was speeding elsewhere.

  Too young, she thought. That’s the entire point.

  Who’s going to come looking for me here?

  The lift doors wrenched themselves open with an unpleasant squeal, and Chloe stepped out into the relative freshness of sub-level 39.

  If the bottom half of the pit was designed for industry, the top was where the workers lived. Quite what old Harriet had so loved about the depths was beyond Chloe, though she wasn’t about to spend much time wasting her thoughts trying to unravel the mental processes of a madwoman.

  Most likely, she simply found that little space in the corridor on sub-level 75 and took it as her own. Not everyone here was fortunate enough to have their own living quarters. Those that didn’t work, or couldn’t find an available ‘box’, as the tiny apartments here were aptly called, mostly just parked themselves wherever they could, living on scraps from the trash and the kindness of strangers, both of which were in short supply.

  This wasn’t a place for wastefulness, nor was it particularly neighbourly. It was a place for lost souls, a tomb of little joy. Living here in Sub-Tower 12 was a simple admittance of failure in life. It was existence at its lowest form, a state that so much of the population now had to accept.

  Gone were the good days. They’d left before Chloe was born…

  Sub-level 39 was a grim place, though less so than the working levels below. Nothing but a jungle of tiny box apartments that littered the many corridors stretching away from the central gallery.

  The middle of the entire earthscraper was hollow, delving deep into the crust of the earth hundreds of metres down. Each of the hundred levels had a gallery that surrounded the core, giving a view up and down through the belly of the beast. It was quite the sight on days when you could actually see - mostly, visibility was poor, owing to the steam that constantly rose from the lower levels.

  Sometimes, just to avoid the temperamental elevators, Chloe would take the scenic route when moving between the floors. Each had a staircase leading to the level above and below, providing a route, should you need it, from the lowest level right up to the surface without ever having to step into an elevator. If the power failed - and that was often, particularly at night when certain systems were manually shut down - then the only way out of this subterranean tower block would be right up through the core.

  Chloe knew, of course, that not all earthscrapers were like this one. Here in the southern outskirts of LA, they were mostly used for industry. Others, however, were intended for pleasant, and even luxury, living. Safe havens beneath the earth and beyond the threat of warfare.

  That was the primary reason for their inception. Skyscrapers, though still common, were always considered more dangerous living abodes than the earthscrapers that were beginning to replace them. The Second American civil war had seen so many of the giant towers toppled that people often sought out more sheltered living. It was a slow shift, and still in its early days, but Chloe knew that the longer this new, third conflict went on, the more appealing subterranean living would become.

  But not here, in Sub-Tower 12. Few wished to be here, and most were forced here by a need to find work. The factories in the deep created many things, giving employment to thousands, but rewarded them with nothing but money for rent and a minimal allowance of food. In the end, the people here were living day to day, hand to mouth, with few pleasures beyond the vices that had taken to infesting the place.